The Island of Missing Trees

About this book

In the summer of 1974, two teenagers, Kostas, who is Greek, and Defne, who is Turkish, meet in secret at a tavern in divided Cyprus. A fig tree growing through the tavern's roof witnesses their hushed meetings, and is present when war breaks out and the teenagers vanish. Decades later in north London, sixteen-year-old Ada, who has never visited the island of her parents' birth, seeks to untangle years of her family's silence. Her only connection to her ancestors' land is a fig tree growing in her garden.